Gatehouse has another published children’s author – and this time it’s the town provost.
Local writers Alan McClure (Jack’s Well, Calum and the Mountain) and Susi Briggs (Nip Nebs) have already earned rave
reviews.
Now Helen J Keating hopes to emulate her fellow citizens’ success with Andyel and his Magic Daddy.
The little book, Helen’s first, was conceived and written in Galloway – but the subject matter is straight out of Czech legend.
Not only that – all the illustrations are the work of a 13-year-old Czech teenager, Sidonie Prochazkova.
Helen told the News: “Sidonie is the grandaughter of Czech friends whom we got to know when we took a school over to Prague on an exchange in 1989 before the Velvet Revolution.
“I was house mistress at the Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset at the time.
“The head of house’s father was a diplomat attached to the embassy in Prague and he arranged the exchange for us.”
During the visit Helen noticed statues of a weird character called The Waterman along the River Vltava.
The Lord of the Rings-type creature is famed in Czech folklore as a mischievous river spirit able to disguise himself as a real human being.
The gargoyle caught Helen’s imagination – and the mythical minx features in her book.
Without giving too much away, Andyel’s father Grimble inherits a magical house beneath a lake from his uncle who was a Waterman.
And the wee collection of tales eventually found the light through adversity in the form of a gammy knee and the pandemic.
Helen explained: “I actually wrote the stories several years ago.
“Then I read it to an agent and author at the 2018 Wigtown Book Festival who suggested changes.
“During lockdown I was incapacitated after I did my knee cartilage – and that gave me the time to rewrite the stories.
“I found a very nice publisher and I’m really quite chuffed with it.”
Helen added: “Sidonie attends a school in Prague that has a special art department.
“She drew the illustrations last year when she was just 13.
“It’s lovely for her to be in print – she didn’t actually believe it would happen for a long time.
“In days gone by the Waterman would often be found sitting near to the water’s edge, either playing cards, smoking a pipe or otherwise just generally loitering around.
“These days you can see many statues of him beside the Vltava river in Prague.”
Andyel and his Magic Daddy is available on Amazon.
